Check reality at the door for Skilling hearing

Attention passengers, please put your tray tables in their upright and locked positions, turn off all electronic devices and stow all logical thought in preparation for our landing on Planet Skilling.

The upside down world that is Jeff Skillings defense once again intersected with our own in downtown Houston today. The fallen Enron chief’s lawyers are arguing for a new trial after a Supreme Court ruling this summer struck down one of the government’s criteria for convicting Skilling.

Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle

Petrocelli: lead ambassador from Planet Skilling

Skilling’s attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, argued that his client, who’s serving 24 years related to Enron’s collapse, should be retried because the Supremes ruled that prosecutors improperly applied an anti-fraud law known as honest services. The law should apply only in cases such as bribery, they found.

Petrocelli argues that by casting out honest services, all 19 counts against Skilling – for conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors – are tainted.

In kicking the case back to the 5th Circuit, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted at the time, though, that removing honest services from the equation doesn’t necessarily undermine the conspiracy charge against Skilling.

The government argued today, as it has in the past, that the evidence to convict Skilling on securities fraud was overwhelming, and that honest services was just one rationale jurors could have used in determining Skilling’s guilt.

Skilling was convicted, Justice Department lawyer Douglas Wilson argued, of misleading and lying to investors, which constituted securities and fraud and conspiracy.

“The evidence that Skilling made false statements is irrefutable,” he said.

In its filing before the hearing, the government said that “no rational jury could have failed to find that Skilling conspired to commit securities fraud.”

Even so, the government would have been better off not bringing up honest services in the first place.

In the meantime, Petrocelli promises more desperate legal tactics if this one doesn’t pan out. Asked after the hearing if a ruling against Skilling would be “it” in the legal battle, he replied: “It will never be it. There’s always more that could be done.”

Skilling was so guilty that even his own mother would have convicted him. That is why I don’t understand why the government went out on such a shaky limb, throwing the “honest services” and other stuff at him. It’s almost as though they were afraid of their case failing, so they just threw everything they could find at him desperately hoping something would stick.

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Sooner or later he will get a new trial and with no Ken Lay around, he will blame it all on Lay and wind up walking free. They could have kept the trial clean and simple, gotten a clean conviction and we would never have heard anything more about him till we saw a little story in the Chronicle about him dying in prison 20 years or so from now.

I’m not sure I’d call a legal tactic “desperate” when the Supreme Court agrees with it. The only desperation here is on the part of the government prosecutors, who have to pretend that their theory for convicting Skilling didn’t really have anything to do with his conviction. Good luck with that.

Most of these guys on the Special Task Force have moved on, right? “It’s almost as though they were afraid of their case failing, so they just threw everything they could find at him desperately hoping something would stick”

Look at the political capital and opportunity during the investigation, we can give our buddies special deals and nail an alien at the same time (Recluse).

Second, a conviction by any means looks good on a resume, lets just let the guys behind us clean up the mess, while we get the big sign on bonus and speaking engagements before the “S!!! hits the fan”.

Regards Second, the Task Force took a page from Enron Energy Services: Mark to Market. Market our wares at ficticious and inflated amounts, get our bonuses based upon these unsustainable amounts and then get out of town before the reality sets in.